


Where did I lose you?

by Ima1



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, but with a better outcome, inspired by a true story, still angsty though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 13:23:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15664059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ima1/pseuds/Ima1
Summary: Inspired by that story where they unwittingly cheat on each other with each other.Or, somehow an anonymous internet chat might be the key to saving a doomed marriage.





	Where did I lose you?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Fun fact, I hate cheating fics and avoid them like the plague. Ha, the hypocrisy! I think I got body snatched. Brain snatched? One of those for sure. Anyway, hope you like it, let me know what you think, please! :)

 

Lexa stares at the words on the screen, heart beating rapidly in her chest, both in anticipation and in dread.  
****

 

_I want to meet you._

 

And, just like that, this whole thing jumps off from an easily denied fantasy and comes crashing down with a giant’s weight into reality.

 

* * *

 

It didn’t start out like this. Nothing ever does, of course. No one starts a marriage thinking that it’ll end badly or, worse yet, that it’ll never end, leaving them trapped in a nightmare.

 

Lexa never thought it would happen to them. She never thought she could live to hate being with her wife, to resent her so much she spends as much time as possible at work to avoid having to look at her.

 

They were supposed to love each other forever. They were supposed to live happily ever after, to support each other, to survive the rough patches together. They foolishly thought the rough patches would be mild bumps on the road, that they wouldn’t be like the other couples who let their marriage fall to shambles. They thought they could do anything together.

 

They didn’t survive the rough patch. Not when it was an actual rift-wide tear in the fabric of their world. Not when it turned into more than a year-long period that left them spending more time apart than they ever did together.

 

Turns out, they were just like the other couples. Worse, perhaps. At least the others had the decency to put an end to it.

 

Lexa doesn’t actually know why they don’t

 

She lays up at night, alone in their bed or alone on the couch, and she wants to just end it, to call it quits, to release them both from this misery. But, when she thinks about it, there’s that little twist in her heart that _hurts_. For what they used to be perhaps. For the vow they once made. For fear of proving to everyone, and, most of all, to herself, that she’s a failure.

 

So she wakes up in the morning while her wife is still sleeping and she gets out of the house before she’s even started to stir. And she doesn’t end it. And repeat.

 

She wonders what’s Clarke’s excuse.

 

* * *

 

Clarke’s heart flutters in her chest like it hasn’t in a really long time. Longer than she can even remember, no matter how hard she tries to pull at the strings of her memory. Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t try to pull at them, the idea that she might succeed leaving a hollow pain in her chest.

 

She used to be happy. She _knows_ she did. But she doesn’t feel like it was her when she relieves memories of those times. It feels like watching a movie of someone else’s life. Someone who looks relatively familiar but also oh so very different because, that face — smiling and laughing and _happy —_ it feels like it’s never been her.

 

She looks in the mirror and that’s not the face she sees and she can’t even imagine how her eyes might lose that dimness, that pain, how the lines around them might soften into happy, mirthful wrinkles, how her lips can carry the weight of that smile.

 

The dissonance is so great that Clarke barely sees the person in the pictures that surround her house as herself. The best she can come up with is some alternate version of herself. A delusion.

 

But she knows, she _knows_ with a conviction that hurts more than anything, that she used to be happy. Once upon a time. She must have been. She just can’t remember.

 

But now, now she feels that unfamiliar _thing_ in her chest, that whisper of a long forgotten memory.

 

Clarke stares back at her phone in anticipation, heart hammering on her chest, and she waits.

 

And she waits and waits and waits, until, finally, the words appear on the screen.

 

_I want to meet you, too._

 

* * *

 

Once upon a time, Clarke never would’ve considered doing what she is doing now. Sitting on the couch, absorbed in a conversation with another woman on her phone, while her wife lays in bed working on her computer.

 

Once upon a time, she never would’ve imagined that she could find someone other than Lexa that she’d want to talk to all the time, to lose herself in conversation, to make her laugh like she hasn’t in a long, long time, so long she almost forgot how to.

 

Once upon a time, she thought she would love her wife forever.

 

She was wrong.

 

Now, she can barely look at her. She can barely be in the same room as her. She shares her house with a ghost. And worse, with the ghost of the woman she used to love, the woman she swore would be her whole life.

 

They exist in a perfect harmony of avoidance. It’s necessary for their survival. Lexa leaves earlier than she can even try to justify, earlier than the security guard for the day shift arrives, and she comes back late at night. When she comes back at all.

 

Clarke should care more, it seems. She thinks maybe if she cared whether her wife was sleeping at home or not she would be a better wife. Perhaps she should worry about her sleeping with someone else on those nights. She thinks it should bother her.

 

She should care. It seems like something a wife should do, even one who’s nothing more than a fixture in your house at this point.

 

Clarke wonders when she stopped caring.

 

* * *

 

Lexa often thinks back to the event that catapulted them into this hell. Mostly it’s an exercise in futility because it holds no real explanation.

 

To everyone else, that is when they started to have problems. She’s tired of people constantly walking on eggshells around her about it, her friends nudging her to get professional help, sending her pitying looks, telling her that it will eventually get easier. That every couple suffers when it happens but that they come out stronger after if they stick together.

 

The thing is, they _did_ support each other through it. They grieved together, they held each other for nights on end, crying in each other’s arms. And then they started to slowly heal together.

 

So what she tries to rack her brain around is how they went from healing over the loss of their child to not being able to stand each other.

 

It was a gradual thing, she thinks.

 

It was after their initial grieving period, because the grief never actually leaves, the pain never goes away, but it becomes some sort of companion, ever present but slightly duller. It was in this period, when they thought they could start moving on with their lives, that they could start being happy again.

 

She knows she’s partly to blame, of course she is, a marriage doesn’t get to this state on only one person’s actions, but she resents Clarke for pushing her.

 

It was little things. It was a lot of little things, all piled up until Lexa was a steaming pot of boiling rage. And then she burst when Clarke suggested they try to have another baby.

 

That didn’t go well. And that is a huge understatement. Clarke never brought that idea up again, but the tension was still there, the resentment a constant strain.

 

So no, they survived the loss, that wasn’t the problem. What they didn’t survive was what comes after.

 

* * *

 

It didn’t start out as anything serious. It was mostly a way to vent, to be silly, to let loose. To think of something other than her suffocating house. So she created a Tumblr page where she wasn’t Lexa Woods, business mogul, wife, mother. She was _iamhedafuckyoujason_ because it was an inside college joke and she wanted to be _that_ Lexa, she wanted to be the Lexa who was carefree and fearless, opinionated and headstrong. Hopeful.

 

She wanted a break from the Lexa who is disappointed with life, who resents her wife but can’t resent getting married because it brought her their son (though she secretly hates herself for wishing she hadn’t, for wishing she didn’t have to be in this much pain).

 

It started as a break from reality.

 

But then, she got a message one day from someone saying they really liked what she posted, who laughed at some of her most irreverent posts, who begged her to write something about the most recent Twitter controversy.

 

It was innocent. It was just talking to a random internet stranger. Lexa didn’t know anything about the person, could only just assume that _skyprincess_ was a woman, though it wasn’t a sure thing.

 

But then, it quickly became the highlight of her day. Lexa would wake up and she’d message her, and they’d keep on talking throughout the day whenever they had a free minute. But at night they would talk for _hours_ , and Lexa would _smile_. Honest to god smile, something she hadn’t done in months, all because of this woman.

 

Yes, _skyprincess_ was, in fact, a woman. Thirty-six years old, married, a doctor, a mother. That was all she really knew. No names, neither of them seemed particularly keen on letting it cross the platonic. No personal details other than her marriage was dead, much like Lexa’s, they both resented their spouse, and they had both lost their child.

 

They talked. About anything. They discussed ideas leaving her breathless with that fire that only an intellectual discussion leaves her. They joked and laughed. They comforted each other, offering sympathetic words and patient ears. Then they started flirting. Harmless, at first, though for people as starved for affection as they both were it quickly became _something_.

 

Soon, talking to this stranger, who had quickly become a friend and something _more_ , was the only thing keeping Lexa sane, the only thing giving her the strength to go home and face an empty house. Not necessarily empty of people, though, and that was perhaps even worse.

 

It didn’t start as anything serious, but now, now she can’t think of anything else she’d rather take more seriously.

 

* * *

 

Clarke wonders if Lexa realizes she smiles whenever she’s on her phone. She can see her from the corner of her eye when she’s in the kitchen and Lexa’s in the living room, or when she’s getting ready for bed and Lexa’s on their bed.

 

Working, that’s what Lexa is supposed to be doing, but Clarke is sure that’s not what’s got her smiling into her phone or laptop. She’s one hundred percent sure budget reports aren’t interesting or funny, even to Lexa.

 

It’s also not a humorous smile. Well, sometimes it is, sometimes she lets out a little breathless chuckle, and the sound startles Clarke so much that her heart does a little painful twist, like a sharp knife planted in her core. It was a sound she used to hear a lot more — though back then, when she was the one who made Lexa laugh, it was an actual, mirthful laugh. This is a ghost of that, just like it’s owner is the ghost of the person she once was, but it’s still something and it stirs _something_ inside Clarke.

 

It should be jealousy. A normal wife would be jealous that her partner is potentially having an affair. She even googled it and everything. It’s what normal wives do, they get upset with those things. Clarke is not a normal wife.

 

Oddly, those few glimpses of that smile on Lexa’s face are the only time Clarke can stand to look at her and not hate her. It reminds her of the woman she supposedly fell in love with. It makes her somewhat relieved that it wasn’t all in her head, that, at one point, she did have a reason to fall in love with her. That it was real, once. That the photos in the frames are actually of them and not some strange utopian models.

 

Clarke doesn’t often ponder on Lexa’s probable affair though, not when she’s sucked into her own conversations with her online _something_.

 

She makes her feel alive. This woman who is intelligent and sarcastic and charming and caring and passionate, this woman whom she’s never met, makes her feel more alive than the one passing her by in the corridors like a ghost. She makes her feel _seen_ , even without sharing a single photo, not even a name.

 

* * *

 

Clarke knows it’s partly her fault, the state that their sham of a marriage is in. She pushed too far. She pushed too early. But she needed it.

 

She doesn’t understand Lexa’s vehement denial at another try. She misses their baby boy with all her heart, but she wishes they would try again, she wants to hear laughter in her life again, wants to feel that all-encompassing love for another little creature again. Wants her heart to be filled with love and not only sorrow.

 

She doesn’t think it’s unreasonable. She doesn’t. And she _hates_ Lexa for making her feel bad about it. For flat out saying she’s trying to replace their baby. For implying that she wouldn’t feel the same had she been the one to get pregnant; as if Clarke’s loss is somehow less because she wasn’t the one to carry their son.

 

It’s been almost two years and she still feels that loss every day. It’s not something that goes away, but it’s not as sharp as it was and she wishes she could have another try. She wishes she could have another baby to love.

 

She used to be good at loving people, once.

 

* * *

 

Lexa’s not sure when she fell out of love with her wife.

 

Objectively, she knows. It was sometime during all those fights and that growing resentment. She doesn't hate her. She came close, for a period there, she really did. Now, Clarke is just someone she used to be in love with, but whom she doesn’t like anymore.

 

Is that a thing? Can you love someone but not like them? It seems like a thing. But also, her feelings are buried underneath so much resentment that she’s not sure she can call them love anymore. Only there must be some frazzled remnant of it left in her chest, it’s the only explanation she can find for this reluctance she has in letting go. But it’s buried very, very deep.

 

So Lexa doesn’t actually know when it happened because it wasn’t an “Aha!” moment, it wasn’t like flipping a switch. I was a slow process, barely noticeable by itself but, little by little, piece by piece, those feelings were dug out of her chest.

 

What does strike her memory, what became imprinted in her brain, is the moment she realized she wasn’t in love with her wife anymore.

 

And that is the moment Lexa realized she was in love with the person on the other end of her internet chat.

 

* * *

 

In hindsight, it should’ve been obvious. Those feelings she had, that thrill to be talking to someone else, someone who made her feel listened to and cared and valued, they could’ve only come because she had fallen out of love with her wife.

 

Lexa knows this, objectively she does. She’s not one of those people who can fall in love with different people at once, it’s just not the way she’s built. So it should’ve clicked.

 

But it didn’t. Because it didn’t click that she was _falling_ in love. Not at first. Not for a long time.

 

Lexa enjoyed their conversations. Enjoyed them so much that she would often take breaks during her days to talk to her, would work around her schedule at the hospital, would find herself awake at two in the morning because _skyprincess_ had a night shift which was going too slowly and with very little patients and she was bored and she wanted to talk to Lexa to pass the time. And Lexa accommodated her, no questions asked. She gladly took time away from her already limited sleep schedule to spend hours talking to this amazing woman.

 

She felt appreciated, like she mattered. She felt more and more drawn to this woman whose name she didn’t know or even what she looked like.

 

It was the silliest thing in the world.

 

It was absolutely stupid, completely out of character for her.

 

It was undeniably amazing.

 

She was _alive_. Lexa might feel dead inside when she has to go home or even think about it, but, here, lost in conversation about the legitimacy of an octopus overtake on human civilization, she’s as alive as she’s ever been.

 

* * *

 

Clarke catches her reflection in the mirror as she leaves the hospital and she’s so caught off guard that it stuns her to a complete halt.

 

And she stares.

 

It’s like seeing a ghost, someone she thought was long dead.

 

She’s _smiling_. Actually smiling, something she wasn’t even sure she was still able to do. And her eyes are sparkling so much they almost look a shade lighter, closer to the sky blue of a brilliantly sunny day than their natural cerulean. And she looks younger. Free.

 

Clarke looks…happy. She looks _happy_. A word she didn’t think she’d ever associate with herself again.

 

And she feels it, too. It’s not just on her face, it’s spread all over her body, concentrating like a glowing ball in the middle of her chest.

 

She feels breathless with it, doesn’t actually know what to do with this strange sensation which has been as foreign to her as an alien in the past two years.

 

It’s like the person looking back at her in that reflection is, in fact, that alternate version of Clarke. Like she’s having a glimpse into another universe.

 

And then, the longer she stares, the more her smile grows. And the more she doesn't recognize herself. But she wants to, gods does she _want_ to. She wants to see that face in the mirror every time she looks, is so, so tired of seeing that shadow of herself.

 

And Clarke knows. This woman she met online, the one responsible for bringing back this side of her, she doesn’t ever want to let her go.

 

But first, she must find out her name.

 

She feels giddy with just the thought.

 

* * *

 

Clarke sends her a message letting her know she ran a bit late with a patient but is on her way and _iamhedafuckyoujason_ tells her she’s already there.

 

Her chest is bubbling with excitement and she _really_ wants to put a name and a face to this amazing woman who can make her feel all these things.

 

She gets to the restaurant faster than was probably advisable — she might have broken a few speeding laws — and she spots her almost immediately.

 

She’s got her back facing the entrance, but Clarke is sure it’s her. She’s wearing the red dress she said she would and there’s a single red rose on the table.

 

(Clarke had laughed when the other woman suggested it but she’d said she couldn’t go wrong with the classics, cliché as they were.) 

 

Clarke makes her way over gingerly, adrenaline coursing through her every cell and, when she approaches her and turns, the woman turns with her.

 

And Clarke freezes.

 

* * *

 

Lexa stares, shocked.

 

Clarke is a statue in front of her, mouth parted and eyes unblinking, pale as a ghost. And Lexa stares, just as frozen.

 

And then Lexa blinks, and so does Clarke, who clumsily slumps into the chair opposite her. And stares. Still open-mouthed, still unnaturally pale.

 

The waiter comes and Lexa has the vague awareness of ordering them some wine, though she has no idea which one of if her words even made sense.

 

All she knows is that she’s still staring at this woman, this mystery woman from the internet who’s been chatting with her every day for over six months, who has heard her talk about all her problems, who talked about her own problems in return, who has made her laugh like she hadn’t in an eternity. Who has made her fall in love again.

 

This mystery woman.

 

Her _wife_.

 

* * *

 

Clarke can’t do anything other than stare. She thinks she sat down, is hoping she didn’t just fall on a chair, though she has no recollection of actually telling her body to do so.

 

Yet here she is. Sitting across from Lexa in a restaurant. On a date. With her wife. The blogger she fell in love with.

 

She knows that, technically, it’s impossible to stop thinking, impossible for a brain to actually just _stop_ (not unless you’re dead, that is). But she’s quite sure that this applies as a case study to dispute that hypothesis because her brain is stymied. Pure frozen ice. She’s got nothing.

 

Lexa.

 

She’s been talking to _Lexa_ all along.

 

The woman she once loved. The woman she hates. The woman she fell in love with.

 

Her wife. She fell in love with her wife.

 

Again.

 

Nope. She’s got nothing. Her brain is fried.

 

* * *

 

“Did you know?” Lexa asks her at some point, long after the waiter had come to bring their wine and take their orders (which she’d had to order for Clarke who was still shocked silent).

 

Clarke comes out of her stupor then, blinks repeatedly and closes her mouth only to reopen and close it again a couple of times.

 

She shakes her head as if clearing her thoughts and blinks again.

 

“No.”

 

Lexa nods and takes a sip of her wine, anything to help her brain start working again.

 

A part of her wants to just up and leave. But she’s sure a bigger part of Clarke wants that as well, and, if she hasn’t done it yet, Lexa will damn sure make certain she keeps her ass right where it is.

 

“How is this even possible?” she whispers after a while, mostly to herself.

 

Clarke answers her anyway. “I don’t even— When did you get a Tumblr?” she asks, as if that’s the most pressing question at the moment.

 

Well, Lexa supposes they have to start somewhere.

 

“I needed an escape,” Lexa tells her truthfully. “Felt like a fun way to not be me.”

 

Clarke tilts her head then and narrows her eyes in thought.

 

“But you were,” she says after a long pause, voice slightly shaky yet at the same time as if she’s coming to this conclusion now. “It was you. All of it was _you_.”

 

Lexa doesn’t have anything to say to that so she takes the glass in her hand and twirls the wine, hoping somewhat that the swirling pattern will hypnotize her into another dimension.

 

“I don’t know how I didn’t see it,” Clarke muses to herself in half wonder, half shock.

 

Lexa shakes her head slightly, a wry smile tilting the corner of her mouth minutely.

 

“I didn’t see it either. I think we don’t really know each other anymore,” she ventures. Then tilts her head and reconsiders. “Or maybe we forgot somewhere along the way.”

 

“That was really you, though,” Clarke says again, this time her brows starting to furrow in distress.

 

“Of course,” Lexa tells her ruefully.

 

“I hate you. Or I hated you. I hate my wife,” she says matter-of-factly and then lets out a sharp laugh that’s too painful to be anything close to humorous. “We spoke about it countless times.”

 

Lexa laughs weakly as well, too hurt to do anything else. “We did.”

 

“How can I hate my wife but fall in love with her at the same time?” she asks rhetorically, a sharp pain to her tone which has Lexa wincing.

 

“You forgot who I really was,” Lexa tells her sadly.

 

* * *

 

Clarke turns over Lexa’s words in her brain but they don’t feel right, they don’t fall into the right places.

 

“No,” she says after a while. “I never forgot who you were. But I think I focused on the things I hated rather than the things I loved.”

 

Lexa looks at her with sorrowful understanding and nods.

 

And somehow, Clarke sees her for the first time in a long while. Really _sees_ her.

 

She looks the same, physically she looks the same as she always has, the years being far gentler on her than they have been on Clarke, but there’s a layer to her, many in fact, that was not there before.

 

She’s beautiful. Unfairly so. A mixture of sharpness and softness that used to leave Clarke completely mesmerized, itching for a pencil to draw of a brush to paint.

 

It used to be Lexa’s mask. During all those fights, during all their hardest times together, and especially during the last year, this beautiful face of hers was a mask. Stoic, unwavering, cold. Clarke used to hate it. She used to hate that Lexa could just close herself off, not allow even the tiniest bit of emotion on her face, act as if Clarke’s presence was nothing more than another piece of unimportant furniture, not even interesting enough to deserve a glance or a second thought.

 

But it’s not a mask now. Or, rather, it’s starting to crack. Maybe Lexa’s _letting_ it crack, letting Clarke really see her.

 

And she does.

 

The pain in her eyes… That green used to be vibrant, it used to be so enticing that Clarke could be lost in them. It used to shine with mirth, it used to beam with love. For _her_. Somewhere along the way it turned into a pain so deep, it’s almost visceral. And Clarke was so blinded by her own suffering that she didn’t see it. Or she refused to see it.

 

There’s no hiding from it now, though.

 

* * *

 

“Why did you let it get this far?” Lexa asks her, curious for this one thing that’s been bugging her for long.

 

Clarke watches at her in contemplation, looking more like she’s deciding on whether to say the words or not rather than still having to think about the answer.

 

“I was going to end it,” she finally concedes and Lexa’s chest constricts at those words, that permanent dull pain at the thought turning suddenly biting.

 

“Why didn’t you?” Lexa asks, unable to look at her. Her voice comes out shakier than intended but if Clarke notices she doesn’t show it.

 

“Because of you. Or, well, the you who talked to me online,” she explains when Lexa gives her a confused look. “Remember I asked you the same question?” Lexa nods and she continues. “You said you thought there was still some love left and you didn’t want to end it if there was still a chance.”

 

“But you said you hated your wife. _Me_ ,” she says, her voice no more than a whisper, practically forcing the words out.

 

Clarke nods, a frown on her face. “I guess your words convinced me to wait for a bit longer, see if there was really nothing left to salvage.”

 

“Is there?” Her words come out weak, trembling, fearful, and she doesn’t actually remember giving her brain permission to utter them.

 

Clarke looks at her for a long time, her gaze so penetrating Lexa feels raw. Almost as if she’s being seen for the first time.

 

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke plays with the food that miraculously appeared in front of her, though, judging by its temperature, she’s sure it must have been sitting there for a while.

 

“You never once said you hated me,” she says, and Lexa looks up, eyes wide.

 

“I don’t,” she says after a pause to perfectly wipe her mouth and place the napkin on her lap, movements deliberate and controlled.

 

“How come?”

 

Lexa’s brows crease minutely and then smooth over just as quickly.

 

“I was in love with you once. I grew to resent you, to hate how our marriage ended up, but I couldn’t hate _you_. Not when it was partially my fault,” she says, her face so earnest that Clarke has a hard time keeping her thoughts straight.

 

She can’t even remember the last time she saw Lexa looking so open, so vulnerable.

 

She can’t remember a time when they would just _talk_ , really talk about their feelings instead of fight and blame each other or, worse, pretend the other didn’t exist.

 

It pulls at something inside her, this awareness that Lexa didn’t hate her, that, even after everything, there was still something there, even if it was more a tribute to a memory than anything else.

 

* * *

 

“Do you really hate me?” Lexa asks her and hates how small her voice sounds, how much hearing those words from Clarke had hurt her worse than she thought was possible.

 

She knew Clarke wasn’t happy, neither of them were, she knew there was resentment and hurt on both sides, but she never imagined she’d one day transform her wife’s love for her into hatred. It’s a skill she wishes she’d never acquired.

 

Clarke ponders on it for long, lips pursed and brow creased.

 

“I did,” she admits. Lexa’s breath hitches. “For turning me into this, into someone I never even thought I could become. I stopped recognizing myself in those damned photos we still have at home. I can barely conjure up happy memories of us without thinking that it must have been a movie,” she continues and Lexa _hurts_. So, so much.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I never meant to turn you into this.”

 

Clarke nods dejectedly and angrily wipes at a tear that fell down her cheek.

 

Lexa blinks hard, realizing her own eyes are welling up.

 

“We did this to each other,” Clarke tells her ruefully and Lexa’s mouth twists into a grimace in agreement.

 

“I keep thinking, sometimes,” Lexa says with a despondent shake of her head and a twist of her lips that is as far from a smile as it can get, “That if someone had shown us a glimpse of the future back when we got married, that I’d never believe them.”

 

Clarke lets out a short laugh, a broken, painful thing. “We thought we could survive anything.”

 

Lexa nods and lowers her eyes.

 

“We didn’t survive each other.”

 

* * *

 

They ride home in silence, yet somehow silently decide that the newfound openness shouldn’t be over, that they shouldn’t just resume living as nothing more than ghosts haunting each other.

 

Clarke sits on the couch, too spent for her body to assume that defensive posture it always gets around Lexa these days, too emotional to do anything but curl up with her knees bent beneath her, arm resting on the back of the couch and supporting her head.

 

Lexa deposits a tumbler of scotch on the coffee table in front of her, keeping hers in her hand while she joins Clarke on the couch, her body imitating Clarke’s.

 

“You fell in love with me again,” Clarke states, reaching for her glass and taking a hefty gulp. It burns. She takes another.

 

Lexa looks at her with a mix of sadness and something she can’t quite pinpoint. Resignation maybe?

 

“I did.”

 

“We fell in love with each other,” Clarke continues, the thought of it making her feel confused but also a little bit excited.

 

This isn’t only her wife, this is the woman she’d spoken to for over six months, confided in, laughed with. She’s a beautiful conundrum and Clarke is struggling to reconcile both versions, struggling to let her heart decide which feelings to keep, struggling to let her brain know it’s okay to give in to one or the other.

 

“Twice,” Lexa points out, and Clarke thinks it’s amusement she sees in her face now. Lexa shakes her head minutely, a small smile pulling at her lips, almost as if she’s found this whole set up, this big fuck you from the universe, something to laugh about.

 

Well, come to think of it, it _is_ funny.

 

Clarke lets out a burst of laughter then, unbidden, and it only grows more and more uncontrolled, nearing hysterics when she sees Lexa joining her in laughter like she hasn’t seen in too long.

 

They’re laughing _together_. They’re laughing. Period. That’s a sight she hasn’t dared imagine in more than a year.

 

Clarke starts to calm down, wiping at the tears that have gathered in her eyes, both from laughter and from sadness.

 

She looks at Lexa then, still chuckling, eyes sparkling with the same mix of emotions and she’s struck with just how… _Beautiful_. There really is no other word for it.

 

Her wife is beautiful and she’d forgotten.

 

Physically, yes, she’s absolutely stunning, had always left Clarke completely weak in the knees just by looking at her. But inside as well, she’s a beautiful thing and Clarke was too blinded by pain to see it.

 

She doesn’t want to forget anymore. She wants to look at Lexa, really look, and remember all the things that made her fall in love with her.

 

She wants to see her for who she really is, not the woman who became so resentful with her marriage that she transformed into someone else.

 

She wants to look into Lexa’s eyes and see them always shinning like this, look at her lips and not have to struggle to remember that they were ever able to smile, not to forget that a single smile of hers can brighten her whole world.

 

* * *

 

Clarke is laughing. Honestly laughing. In a way Lexa almost forgot was possible.

 

It warms her heart so much. That sound was something she lived for, once upon a time. She used to delight in making her wife laugh, even when she’d been having a bad day. She used to be able to do that, then. Lately, she’d only been able to put a permanent frown on her lips and the thought of all that she’d been missing hurts more than anything.

 

She’d lost sight of who her wife really was. She resented her so much, was so hurt by her, that she forgot that Clarke’s presence could bring her so much joy. It used to, constantly. There was a time where she’d come home from work so stressed that she was ready to combust, but Clarke just had to _be_ there and Lexa would relax, would smile.

 

It hurts also. To see her like this and realize how different she’d become, to know that she’s partly responsible for that horrific change, to discover that she was so miserable that Lexa hadn’t even seen the ghost of a smile on her face in _months_.

 

They both seem to come to the same bittersweet realization at the same time and they just sit there, looking at each other, Clarke’s face a mix of fondness and sadness at the memories surfaced. Lexa is sure her face reflects much the same.

 

“You look beautiful tonight,” Lexa tells her, her chest sinking at the awareness that she’d forgotten just how beautiful Clarke is. And worse, at realizing that she hasn’t looked this good, this light, this _free_ , in way too long. And that it’s because of her. “You _are_ beautiful,” she reiterates, both to herself and to Clarke.

 

Clarke’s smile starts out sad but it morphs into a genuine one and she looks down, momentarily bashful.

 

“So are you,” she says with a glint in her eyes.

 

Lexa licks her lips and itches to move forward but she doesn’t dare to, not yet. She hasn’t touched her wife in more than a year, hasn’t even wanted to — much the opposite in fact — but the thought of doing it now is so powerful that she’s sure she’d burst into flames on the spot if she even dared to reach for her hand.

 

“I know you said you weren’t sure if there was anything left to salvage from this hell we’ve been living in, but I would personally like to try,” Lexa tells her, heart racing, palms clammy with fear.

 

Clarke’s eyes widen at that and she runs a nervous hand through her hair.

 

It’s shorter, Lexa vaguely notes, perplexed at herself for not even having realized she’d changed it. Too embarrassed to actually think about when that might have been.

 

“I think…” Clark starts nervously. “I think there might be.”

 

Lexa nods then, her lips forming into a small, elated smile.

 

“How do we do this?”

 

“I think we should start small,” Clarke says, biting her lip.

 

Lexa’s heart flutters in her chest in both anticipation and fear.

 

“Would you like to go on a date tomorrow?” she cautiously asks, heart still too shattered to face the possibility of being broken once again but too stubborn not to try to be happy again. “Not like today. A proper date,” she amends with a small, hopeful smile.

 

Clarke looks at her for a long beat, her eyes cautious, but her smile starts to grow slowly until it’s so bright that Lexa thinks she’ll be absorbed by it.

 

“I would love to.”


End file.
